A Convenient One-Step Synthesis of 1,4-Diketones

Abstract
In the last few years, numerous efforts have been directed to the development of acetonylation methods1. Recent works in this laboratory have shown that O, O-t-butyl and O-isopropenyl peroxycarbonate 1 can be regarded as a good acetonylation reagent; its decomposition in solution results in the substitution of an hydrogen atom by an acetonyl group on each compound Σ-H able to undergo free radical addition reactions to alkenes2. The following free radical chain reaction mechanism has been proposed: